US Market Wrap

Yesterday, was busy in the US and as ever there were more US-China headlines. This time around, all the news was positive surrounding a phase 1 deal and that saw a bit of upside in the SPX.

Meanwhile, the economic data coming out of the US wasn’t all that good. The unofficial ADP report showed only 67K new jobs created last month. This doesn’t bode all that well for Friday’s report, but of course, there is no guarantee of a correlation between the two results on any given month.

Much of the attention, was also on the BOC, who as expected left rates on hold. However, the statement was a little more hawkish or at the very least, less dovish, which led to a fall in the USD/CAD.

Today’s Agenda

After a busy session yesterday, the attention turns back to the Eurozone early today. There are a couple of key data points that we need to keep an eye on that should give us an indication of the state of the economy.

GDP has been sluggish to say the least and is expected to come in at 1.2% YoY. While this is positive, it’s a fair way off what new ECB Christine Lagarde would like to see.

We also get a look at retail sales for October, which are expected to show a decline of -0.3%. Clearly, the new ECB boss still has some work to do and we will need to monitor the EUR/USD closely.

Forex Signal Update

The FX Leaders Team finished without a winner yesterday, but maintain some open positions.

USD/JPY – Pending Signal

The USD/JPY was a frustrating one for us yesterday. We were long looking for the bounce which finally came. But we ran out of room with our stop. However, we will continue to monitor this one for another opportunity to the long side.

Gold – Active Signal

GOLD has been holding underneath some key resistance levels lately so we are currently short. Price has been somewhat range-bound though, but there could be fireworks on Friday with the latest jobs data due for release.

Cryptocurrency Update

BTC has had what I would consider a bit of a false breakout.

Yesterday, price spiked into resistance at $7,800 before quickly selling off. The move came in a period where volatility has been low, as have volumes.

When volumes are down, moves get amplified, but rarely hold. This is basically what we saw yesterday.

The uptick doesn’t really change our bias at all, as we remain looking at opportunities to the downside. Yesterday, I said that we will be looking to sell any bounces into $7,800 and $8,000, which is exactly what happened.

While a break of $7,000, will be a good signal for a short momentum play.